Jubilee

this is a thing i wrote for a college class

it isnt very good but ill probably still get an a

Jubilee

“It’s time to wake up, Harry.”

I woke up to the sound of a drone hovering beside my bed.

“Alright, I’m up,” I muttered.

“Remember: President Riley loves you,” droned the drone.

The drone flew out of the window, and I stumbled out of bed. I reached around for a pair of pants with my four-fingered right hand, and once I found a pair I could use, I pulled it on. I kneeled beside my bed, said my daily prayer to Riley, then got up and walked to the kitchen. Due to rationing, there wasn’t a lot of food available, but I was able to nab an apple for just $300 at the farmers market last week, and I saved it for today, because today’s a special occasion.

I removed a tile on the floor and grabbed a key I was hiding under it. I used the key to unlock a cabinet on the wall, and inside was the fruit of weeks of busting my butt in overtime at the factory, as well as an actual fruit. I pulled the apple out of the cabinet and started eating it, making sure to savor each bite, because it was the only meal I would have that day.

I turned on a television mounted on the adjacent wall and swiped through the channels. Riley Network, Riley News, Riley Sports, Riley Kids. That last channel was a guilty pleasure of mine. When I switched to the network, there was a puppet show on, featuring puppets of a green and blue frog. The puppets weren’t very realistic, though, because the frogs only had two eyes.

“Man, the world can really stink sometimes,” said the green frog.

“Whoa there!” said the blue frog. “You just committed the crime of free thought!”

“What’s free thought?” wondered the green frog.

“Free thought it when you think or say something that goes against the ideals of our Glorious Leader James Riley. Anybody caught in the act of free thought will be sentenced to 600 lashings!”

“Oh, boy,” said the green frog, putting webbed feet with noticeable strings attached to them on its face. “You won’t be getting any more free thoughts from me!”

By now, I had finished my apple, so I returned to my room and looked for my best shirt in the closet. I found a shirt that only had three holes in it, so I put it on. I grabbed my identification card, which was hanging by its lanyard from the closet, and placed it over my neck. After putting on my shoes, I was ready to leave my house, but before I was even out of my room, I heard a knock on the front door.

I walked through the living room and peeked out the window beside the front door, making out the face of my acquaintance, Nathaniel, in the darkness. Every citizen of the Democratic People’s Shining Republic of North America was entitled to one and just one acquaintance, whose name was under our own on our identification cards. The purpose of these acquaintances was to provide us with much-needed company and somebody else to remind us how much President Riley loves us.

There was also an unspoken but just-as-important purpose to acquaintances, which was to provide a check against free thought. Our responsibility as citizens is to always monitor others for instances of free thought, but because we’re with our acquaintances more than anybody else, we’re more likely to hear instances of free thought from them than anybody else. People who successfully report an instance of free thought to the Bureau of Good Vibrations are handsomely rewarded, so as much as I liked James, I always secretly hoped that he would express some free thought so I could report him.

“How’s it going, Harry?” said James as I opened the door and let him in.

“Great!” I replied. “Are you excited for President Riley’s diamond jubilee?”

“Of course, I am! After all…”

“President Riley loves us,” I said, finishing the thought.

Nathaniel chuckled. “That’s right. So, you want to start walking over to Main Street before the traffic gets bad?”

“Yeah.”

One benefit of living in Jamestown, North America’s capital, was getting to experience moments like the diamond jubilee up close. The country’s entire population of 5 million people would either be here, watching the diamond jubilee at home, or watching it on one of the big televisions set up in every city. Once the ceremony started, every network (including Riley Kids) would be tuned into it. I felt proud to be a part of this moment, and my love for President Riley burned stronger than ever.

We walked out onto the dry dirt, and our faces were assaulted by freezing winds. As we walked, we passed several homeless people, stray dogs and cats with extra eyes, ears, and noses, and abandoned vehicles, relics from many years ago. I heard the moans of the homeless people and the whining of the stray dogs even as I was a mile away from them, and I started talking just to get them out of my head.

“So, did your wife give birth yet?” I asked Nathaniel.

“Yes,” muttered Nathaniel, who didn’t seem to want to talk about it.

“Is it a boy or a girl?”

Nathaniel looked down, not wanting to make eye contact. “Girl.”

Unable to ignore the way Nathaniel reacted to my questions, I asked one more. “Is the baby okay, Nathaniel?”

Nathaniel’s thick black goatee made it seem like his mouth was separated from the rest of his body in the darkness as he licked his lips. “The baby’s perfect. Five fingers on each hand, five toes on each foot.”

I immediately regretted asking. “Oh my God, Nathaniel. I…I’m so sorry.”

“Best case scenario, she’ll simply get made fun of a lot at school. Worst case…”

I grabbed Nathaniel’s shoulders, and we both stopped walking. “Don’t think like that! You’ll be okay! She…she’ll be okay.”

“My wife called her a monster, Harry. Couldn’t even look at her. I could barely look at her myself.”

I thought about telling him the truth about myself right then and there, but I knew better than to do that.

“Just remember,” I told Nathaniel. “President Riley loves us. He’ll make everything okay.”

“I know he will,” replied Nathaniel, but I saw something in his eyes that indicated he didn’t believe that.

“Let’s just…enjoy the diamond jubilee. We’ll never experience something like this again.”

Nathaniel took a deep breath. “Yeah, I know.”

Rays of sunlight peeked out through the clouds. That was the most sunlight I ever got to see. According to President Riley’s autobiography, which I read chapters of every night before I went to bed, the sky used to be blue and have a big bright sun that warmed our bodies and grew food below us, but the forces of evil brought on by free thought blotted out the sun, which we can only bring back by wiping out all of the remaining free thought in existence.

We started walking again, and about an hour later, we had finally reached Main Street. There was a man on the side of the road getting whipped by a pair of drones. He was already dead, and was decaying by this time, but the drones, who didn’t know or didn’t care, continued whipping him.

“Isn’t it great that we can see crime being punished?” I said.

“Uh, yeah,” said Nathaniel, clearly thinking about something different.

“Don’t tell me you’re still upset about your daughter!”

“She’s my daughter. Of course, I’m still upset about her! Maybe if you had children of your own, you’d understand.”

That was a low blow, and he knew it. Unlike acquaintances, wives weren’t assigned to us. To encourage child-rearing, the government let men and women choose their own partners, but their love of each other couldn’t take precedent over their love of President Riley, of course, and they had to monitor their spouses just as closely as anybody else for instances of free thought.

I had trouble forming relationships with people the government didn’t assign to me, including my parents and siblings, who I hadn’t talked to since I had left home three years before. My love of President Riley had just been so strong that there wasn’t room for anybody else in my life, other than Nathaniel, who I didn’t feel that close to, either. I wanted to understand more about myself, but the risk of accidentally committing free thought in the process was too strong for me to try it.

We were passing more and more drones, meaning the ceremony had to be close. A few minutes later, we able to see the stage President Riley would give his speech on in the distance.

“I’m so glad we got here early!” I said.

“Yeah, there aren’t a lot of people around here,” said Nathaniel.

“That won’t be the case for long.”

More people started appearing around us, first at a gradual rate, and then quicker until there were so many people around us we could barely move. The parade began above us, with drones projecting holograms of legendary figures like Elvis Presley, Elton John, and Whitney Houston, each singing a verse of our national anthem before the next figure sings the next verse. Fireworks exploded into the number “60” above us, and the spectacle was so grand that I began to cry. Nathaniel, however, stood beside me with the same stoic expression that had been on his face since I first asked about his daughter.

The ceremony continued with large, decorated airships floating above us and projecting even larger images of President Riley, first as a military officer, then as a military commander, then in his current position as leader of the Democratic People’s Shining Republic of North America. The crowd cheered as all of this was going on, and the cheers grew louder as the airships halted right above the stage and pointed lights at the stage to reveal our president, a tall, slender man with large glasses, smooth blonde hair that the small amount of sunlight burning through the clouds seemed to reflect off of, and a face so clean-shaven you couldn’t even see the hair follicles on the massive images of his face that the airships were now projecting into the sky.

“Hello,” said President Riley, barely audible under the cheers of the crowd.

Riley smiled and held a hand up to quiet the crowd.

“Hello. I am your great and powerful ruler, democratically elected to a lifetime term of service to you all,” said Riley. “I have without a doubt the hardest job on this continent...”

A drone flew beside him holding a plate of assorted chocolates with a mechanical arm.

“Thank you,” said Riley, grabbing a piece of chocolate and eating it. “Mmm. Where was I? Oh, yes. I have the hardest job on this continent, but I bear it because I love each and every one of you. I also love this chocolate. Is that caramel?”

“Indeed,” said the drone with a female voice.

“God, I’m such a genius,” said Riley. “Anyway, I want to thank you all for complying with food rationing. Our food supply has been shrinking for a while, and…could you just feed the rest of them to me?”

The drone started putting chocolates in Riley’s mouth.

“Mmm, yes. Our moom mummly ham meen mimking mor a mile, am…”

Riley held up a finger to stop the drone, and he swallowed the chocolates, pulling a handkerchief out from under his purple blazer and using it to wipe his mouth. The drone extended another mechanical arm, grabbed the handkerchief, and pulled the arm with the handkerchief back into its oval, metallic body.

“…and it’s important that we all work towards preserving what little food we have left for future generations,” said Riley.

“Hypocrite,” muttered Nathaniel.

A horde of drones immediately flew out from behind the crowd.

“What’s going on over there?” wondered Riley.

“Free thought detected!” exclaimed a drone with the same female voice.

“What did you just do, Nathaniel?” I whispered.

“I…I don’t know. It just came out of me!” said Nathaniel.

“Free thought detected!” repeated another drone.

“Ooh, free thought? This is gonna be good!” said Riley.

“More chocolates?” asked the drone holding the plate next to Riley.

“Do you even need to ask?” said Riley, rubbing his hands together.

People in the crowd screamed and ran over one another as drones flew all around us, blinking red lights and extending electroshock weapons from their bodies. The projections over us disappeared, and we started running with everybody else.

“Free thought detected! Free thought detected!” echoed the female voices through the crowd.

Nathaniel tripped, and I grabbed his hand.

“No!” Nathaniel pulled his hand away. “Leave me here! Save yourself! I’m dying either way.”

I should have left him there, but all I could think about in that moment was Nathaniel’s daughter, and I knew it wasn’t an option. I picked Nathaniel up and put him on my back. He was lighter than I expected, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. He always wanted to save money instead of using it to buy food, so he sometimes went weeks without eating. The baggy clothes he wore just did a good job of hiding how underweight he really was.

Nathaniel ribs dug into me as I ran, Nathaniel screaming and crying and begging me to let him go. The drones continued flying everywhere, but fortunately, I don’t think they knew where the source of the blasphemy came from, and I wasn’t about to let them find out.

After about 15 minutes of running, my legs were already sore, and we were far enough away from the chaos that I felt safe stopping for a bit. I crawled into the window of one of the many abandoned stores on the side of the road and gestured to Nathaniel to follow me inside. Once we were both inside, we sat under the window where hopefully the drones wouldn’t be able to find us.

“Why did you help me?” asked Nathaniel after a long silence.

“Because you’re my friend,” I replied.

“I’m not your friend! I’m your acquaintance! If I caught you in that situation, I wouldn’t have hesitated to turn you in, so why didn’t you turn me in?”

“Shh! Be quiet! They might hear us!”

“I don’t care at this point. My options are either to die here or go back home and wait for the Bureau of Sweet Loving to take my daughter away.”

I didn’t know what to tell Nathaniel. Actually, I did know, but I was afraid to. I looked into Nathaniel’s eyes, which were such a dark brown that it was hard to tell where his pupils ended. I looked outside the window and saw that most of the drones were gone before sitting back down.

“Nathaniel, there’s something I need to tell you.”

I was born just a few miles south of Jamestown. My parents were factory workers, just like I was, and just like everyone who didn’t work in one of the bureaus. I was in a small white room, and I saw my parents standing with a very tall man in a white coat.

“Your baby is perfectly healthy,” said the man. “Ten fingers on each hand, ten toes on each foot.”

My mother and father were holding hands and both crying. Neither looked in my direction the entire time they were there.

The tall man handed me to my parents, and they drove me home, still not looking at me once. I spent the next several years doing nothing but watching Riley Kids on the television they set up in my room. My parents still fed me, bathed me, and clothed me, but they never said more than few words to me or looked at me for more than a couple of seconds. One day, when I was three or so, I saw an episode of the cartoon show Riley’s Little Runts, and when one of the kids in the show was afraid of a monster under his bed, his mother told him to simply close his eyes and think about Riley whenever he was hurt, scared, or confused.

I was five when I first decided I’d try to watch the television in the living room, which my parents said was off-limits, but which was larger than the one in my room. When I turned the television on, it was tuned into Riley News, which currently had a shot of a reporter in front of a strange building. I didn’t know how to change the channel to Riley Kids, so I just kept watching this instead.

“These cullings have been great for scientific advancement and the future of the human race,” said the reporter. “And I for one am excited to see what we’ll learn from this next one.”

At that moment, the television turned off, and I turned around to find my mother standing behind me.

“Didn’t I tell you that you weren’t allowed to watch this TV, Harry?” said my mother.

“Mom,” I said. “What’s a ‘culling’?”

My mother’s face darkened. Whatever this “culling” was, I knew it had to be bad based on the way she was looking at me, longer than she had ever looked at me before, with a mixture of sadness, regret, and despair.

“Harry,” she said. “Sit down.”

My mother explained to me that the culling was a government initiate to take a portion of the “perfect” population every few years and put them in a laboratory where they’d be subject to regular genetic experiments. Those who had already hit puberty would have significant portions of their eggs and sperm extracted first, but children weren’t exempt from the culling, as many of the experiments needed younger subjects. While age varied, one thing about the culling never varied: those who are taken in the culling never return.

That night, I struggled to fall asleep. I said to myself “close your eyes and think of Riley” over and over again, but when I closed my eyes, all I could think about were needles and men in white coats. This continued until deep in the night, when I finally decided on what I would do.

I snuck out of my room and into the kitchen, where I crawled onto the kitchen counter and found a set of steak knives. I grabbed a steak knife, put my right hand on the counter, then I closed my eyes and thought of Riley. I continued thinking of Riley as I felt a sharp pain in my pinky finger and everything momentarily went white. I continued thinking of Riley as I felt the warm liquid under my hand. I grabbed a kitchen towel, wrapped my hand around in it, and returned to bed, where I no longer had trouble sleeping.

My parents were horrified when they first saw what I had done to myself, but they eventually accepted it, and they were happier with the culling no longer hanging over their heads. They had two more children over the next five years after not having one during my first five years. I could never establish a relationship with them, though, due to the same problems that hampered me from establishing relationships with anybody.

A few days after the birth of my second sibling, we heard a knock on the front door, and my father opened it to find a government officer standing there.

“I’m with the Bureau of Sweet Loving,” said the officer. “Is there a Harry here who I can speak to?”

My father looked at me with concern, but I approached the officer without fear.

“That’s me,” I said.

“It looks like you’re up for the latest culling,” said the officer. “I’ll need you to come with me.”

I raised my right hand. “Do I look like somebody who’d be on the list for the culling?”

The officer looked at my hand with confusion. “There…must have been a mistake. I’m sorry for wasting your time, sir.”

The officer left, and after I closed the door, I let out a large sigh of relief. My parents congratulated me on how brave I was and how strong I was, but I could only think about all the people like me who couldn’t get out of going with that officer. I remembered all the “perfect” kids getting beat up at my school, and instead of helping them, I simply ignored them. I simply ignored us.

Nathaniel said nothing for a while, and when he did, he simply said, “I’m hungry.”

“When was the last time you ate?” I asked Nathaniel, standing up.

Nathaniel stood up with me, and we both crawled out the window and walked down the street, which was now empty.

“Two, maybe three days ago,” said Nathaniel. “Got anything at your place?”

“I’ll buy more food when I get paid tomorrow, and no, you can’t have any of it!”

I still didn’t understand very much about myself, but like the sunlight through the clouds, I had an inkling of it now. I was loyal to my friends. I was no longer afraid of free thought. I realized that the world could really stink sometimes, but I didn’t have to stink with it, and while I could never truly be perfect, that didn’t I couldn’t at least try.